Description
Audie Award Finalist, Original Work, 2013
In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction)—then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.
In the world of Rip-Off!, "Call me Ishmael" introduces a tough-as-nails private eye—who carries a harpoon; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz inspires the tale of an aging female astronaut who’s being treated by a doctor named Dorothy Gale; and Huckleberry Finn leads to a wild ride with a foul-mouthed riverboat captain who plies the waters of Hell.
Once you listen to Rip-Off! you’ll agree: If Shakespeare or Dickens were alive today, they’d be ripping off the authors in this great collection.
The stories included in Rip-Off! are:
• "Fireborn" by Robert Charles Wilson
• "The Evening Line" by Mike Resnick
• "No Decent Patrimony" by Elizabeth Bear
• "The Big Whale" by Allen M. Steele
• "Begone" by Daryl Gregory
• "The Red Menace" by Lavie Tidhar
• "Muse of Fire" by John Scalzi
• "Writer’s Block" by Nancy Kress
• "Highland Reel" by Jack Campbell
• "Karin Coxswain or Death as She Is Truly Lived" by Paul Di Filippo
• "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Robinette Kowal
• "Every Fuzzy Beast of the Earth, Every Pink Fowl of the Air" by Tad Williams
• "Declaration" by James Patrick Kelly
As a bonus, the authors introduce their stories, explaining what they ripped-off—and why.
Rip-Off! was produced in partnership with SFWA—Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Gardner Dozois served as project editor.
About the authors
John Scalzi writes books, which, considering where you're reading this, makes perfect sense. He's best known for writing science fiction, including the New York Times bestseller "Redshirts," which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to astronomy to film, was the Creative Consultant for the Stargate: Universe television series. He enjoys pie, as should all right thinking people. You can get to his blog by typing the word "Whatever" into Google. No, seriously, try it.
“Jack Campbell” is the pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired naval officer who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis before serving with the surface fleet and in a variety of other assignments. He is the author of The Lost Fleet series as well as the Stark’s War series and the Paul Sinclair series. His short fiction appears frequently in Analog magazine. He lives with his indomitable wife and three children in Maryland.
Mike Resnick is the author of more than 40 science fiction novels, including Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Amulet of Power; Santiago; and Return to Santiago. He has won four Hugo Awards and the Nebula Award. He lives in Cincinnati.
Tad Williams is a New York Times and London Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, with novels translated into more than twenty languages and a global readership. He hosted a syndicated radio show for over a decade, co-created the first completely interactive television program, and is currently involved in film, television, comic books, computer games and other multimedia projects. He and his family live in California.
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Lady Astronaut duology and historical fantasy novels: The Glamourist Histories series and Ghost Talkers. She’s a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, three Hugo awards, the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel, and has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. Stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, several Year’s Best anthologies and her collections Word Puppets and Scenting the Dark and Other Stories.
As a professional puppeteer and voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), Mary has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures, and founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve. She records fiction for authors such as Kage Baker, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi.
Mary lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit maryrobinettekowal.com.
Mary Robinette Kowal's profile page
Robert Charles Wilson was born in California, but grew up near Toronto, Ontario. Apart from another short period in the early 1970s spent in Whittier, California, he has lived most of his life in Canada, and in 2007 he became a Canadian citizen. He resided in Nanaimo, British Columbia, and breifly in Vancouver. Currently he lives with his wife Sharry in Concord, Ontario, just north of Toronto. He has two sons, Paul and Devon. His novel Spin won science fiction’s Hugo Award in 2006. Earlier, he won the Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel A Hidden Place; Canada’s Aurora Award for Darwinia; and the John W. Campbell Award for The Chronoliths.
Robert Charles Wilson's profile page
Allen Steele is a science fiction writer with nineteen novels and six collections of short fiction to his credit. His works have been translated worldwide and have received the Hugo, Locus, and Seiun awards, and have been nominated for the Nebula, Sturgeon, and Sidewise Awards. He is also a recipient of the the Robert A. Heinlein Award. His first published story, "Live from the Mars Hotel," was published in 1988, and his first novel, Orbital Decay, was published in 1989. His best-known work is the Coyote series -- Coyote, Coyote Rising, Coyote Frontier, Coyote Horizon, and Coyote Destiny -- and the associative novels set in the same universe: Spindrift, Galaxy Blues, and Hex. A graduate of New England College and the University of Missouri, he is a former journalist, and once spent a brief tenure as a Washington correspondent. He was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and now lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and dogs.
Daryl Gregory is an American science fiction, fantasy and comic book author. Gregory is a 1988 alumnus of the Michigan State University Clarion science fiction workshop, and won the 2009 Crawford Award for his novel Pandemonium.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar lives in London.
Nancy Anne Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain, which she later expanded into a novel with the same title.
Paul Di Filippo's profile page
James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His most recent writing project is James Patrick Kelly's Strangeways, a series of ebooks for Kindle featuring some of his best stories. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette "Think Like A Dinosaur" and in 2000, for his novelette, "Ten to the Sixteenth to One." His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka, The Secret History Of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology and Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast. His website is www.jimkelly.net.
James Patrick Kelly's profile page
Gardner Dozois is an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.
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Christian Rummel's profile page
JONATHAN DAVIS is the founder and chairman of Independent Investor, a specialist financial publishing venture, and a well-known columnist and investment writer. A former business and financial journalist on The Times of London, The Economist, and The Independent, he is a regular columnist for the Financial Times, author of three other books on investment, and a director of three investment companies.
Khristine Hvam has worked as a professional voiceover actor in New York for three years. Some of her most notable work has been with Audible.com as well as the voice of several characters for Pokémon USA. She also enjoys dabbling in theater and is looking forward to exploring new audiobook genres and other creative endeavors.
Stefan Rudnicki's profile page
NICOLA BARBER has appeared on stage in New York and across the country, including with Scarlett Johnansson in The Nanny Diaries. She holds a degree in theatre arts from UNC-Chapel Hill, and has taken classes at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. She has been training and performing voiceovers since 2001, and can be heard in video games, animation, commercials, and corporate videos, as well as on award-winning audiobooks.
Dina is an actress living and working in New York City. Dina has been seen in various roles in movies, TV and in the theater. She has also done some stand-up comedy. She has written two one-woman shows. Dina is originally from New Jersey.
Allyson Johnson's profile page
Marc Vietor is an actor, born in La Jolla, California, and now living in New York. He is a graduate of the Drama Division of the Juilliard School and Yale College, and has appeared in productions for The Roundabout Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, Theatre For A New Audience, The Red Bull Theatre, and Playwrights Horizons. He is also active in the audiobook world, having voiced a number of fiction and nonfiction works.
